Center for Digital Education
By: Tanya Roscorla
January 6, 2015
A number of policy issues will affect how K-12 administrators use technology in schools this year.
Whether administrators want to personalize learning or track student progress, education policies and practices will cause conflicts that must be dealt with in 2015 and beyond.
Let’s take a look at some of these issues.
- Personalized and competency-based education
Personalized and competency-based education raise similar policy issues, even though they’re a bit different. Both of these models often use blended learning technology to help students learn, and they focus on students’ individual understanding of concepts.
With personalized learning, teachers tailor instruction based on where each child is in the learning process. In competency-based education, students learn concepts at their own pace and can move on to new learning material throughout the year when they demonstrate that they understand those concepts.
Competency-based education touches nearly every aspect of public policy, including assessment schedules, accountability systems and funding. And if education continues to shift in this direction, it will require policymakers to start funding students’ education based on their ability level, not their grade and age, said John Bailey, vice president of policy and executive director of Digital Learning Now at the Foundation for Excellence in Education.
It’s hard to personalize learning while still working within a policy framework that requires schools to help all students meet the same standards at the end of their grade year, said John F. Pane, senior scientist at RAND Corporation.
“If you want to free the education system to tailor instruction for every student, they can’t be simultaneously worried about bringing those students to a certain competency level on standards that are set by age and grade level rather than where students really are,” Pane said.
- Data privacy and protection
School districts need rich data sets in their technology systems to power personalized learning. But this type of data collection will continue to clash with the public’s concern over privacy, Pane said.
Though more than 25 student data privacy bills were signed into law in 2014 at the state level, administrators will need to wrestle with data privacy and protection as they sign contracts for technology systems. And that means building trust with parents and applying state and federal laws to their decisions.
“It’s not for a lack of laws in the country right now,” Bailey said. “It’s more of how do you put those laws into practice.”
- Online course access
Online learning will continue to grow at all levels, from the state virtual school level down to the school and district level. And it will become a core part of students’ education, Bailey said.
This growth brings up policy issues like the types of online classes students can take, where they can take those classes and how many of them they can enroll in. States including Texas, Louisiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota have created course access policies that open up the ability for students to enroll in online classes from diverse, accountable education providers to satisfy both elective and core education requirements.
As technology continues to evolve, the policies that support them will also evolve to catch up. The key is to make sure new policies don’t hinder the spread of innovation or create new problems, Bailey said.
Even if the best public policies are in place, it’s up to school administrators to turn these education models into reality on the ground. And their role is more important than ever.